Benghazi inquiry no match for Hill

Credit: Associated Press

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies on the Benghazi attacks.

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It’s been four months of buildup. Near hysteria from Republicans on Fox News. Wild claims that she’d faked a concussion to avoid their withering cross-examination.

But when Hillary Clinton appeared before Congress yesterday, she didn’t break a sweat. Hillary, in fetching designer glasses, was never outfoxed. Never corrected. At one point she nearly cried. At another she pounded her fist and got angry. Meanwhile, most of her tough-guy cross-examiners either wilted or just looked silly.

Yet, incredibly, Hillary was never forced to explain why U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on every Sunday morning news show to say the attack was a reaction to an anti-Muslim film — not an organized terrorist act.

And Hillary never really explained why her underlings (all four of whom have since been removed from their posts) never acted on ever more dire requests for stepped-up security. Nor why the embassy was left unsecured even after the attacks, allowing a CNN reporter to sashay into the rubble and recover the personal journal of murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Hillary repeatedly took responsibility for the tragedy. And she danced around the details, authoritatively, using only notes in her opening remarks. She was, once again, the smartest person in the room, not about to be outmaneuvered even in this, the singular disaster of her otherwise brilliant State Department career.

But why should we be surprised? Hillary Clinton has survived 20 years of scandals. If she does run for president in 2016, Benghazi will not undo her.

A Republican who thinks he can undo her, Rand Paul of Kentucky, told Clinton, “Had I been president at the time … I would have relieved you of your post.”

But in the next breath, he called Benghazi the worst American tragedy since 9/11. Barely a month after Newtown, Paul betrayed a tone-deafness that indicates he won’t get any further in the presidential sweepstakes than his father did.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, another Republican, asked again and again whether the attacks resulted from “spontaneous” protests. Eventually Hillary got mad.

“With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans,” she said. “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It makes enormous difference, of course, because facts, truth, credibility, life and death matter. It was a horrible answer.

But Congress, where some members were licking their chops for weeks anticipating this confrontation, had eight hours to force better answers from Hillary Clinton yesterday. She was out of their league. And they blew it.